


Never Forget

by MoonRiver



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Captain John Watson, Cemetery, Comfort, Friendship, Gen, John in Afghanistan, John-centric, POV John Watson, Remembrance Day, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson Friendship, Soldiers, Veterans, Veterans Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 02:16:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2604917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonRiver/pseuds/MoonRiver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain John Watson honours a fallen soldier on Remembrance Day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Forget

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a soldier, and I don't claim to understand what goes on in the mind of someone who has been in a war, but I honor their courage and their bravery.

Two steps forward.

Three steps back.

Deep breaths.

Two steps forward.

John turned around and closed his eyes.

“You can do this, Watson,” he muttered to himself. “You _are_ going to do this.”

“Do what?”

The army doctor spun around to find his flatmate standing at the top of the steps, watching him. John let out a deep breath as Sherlock studied him, and he could have kicked himself for not being more discrete. The last thing he wanted was Sherlock Holmes knowing about this. In the past year of living at Baker Street he thought he’d done a fine job of keeping his past a secret. He and Sherlock seemed to have a silent agreement that the past was the past. They both had needed a fresh start when they met, and he didn’t want Sherlock finding all the old skeletons in his closet.

“Nothing,” John lied. “I…told Mrs Hudson I’d run out to the shops for her, and I just wish I hadn’t. I have other stuff I could be doing, you know?”

Sherlock’s eyebrows furrowed and John knew his excuse was pathetic.

“Look,” John sighed, “I just have some personal business to attend to, yeah?”

He tugged on the ends of his jacket and diverted his eyes to the floor. He was too ashamed to look his best mate in the eye and admit that he was bloody terrified to do what he knew he had to do that day. Sherlock stared at him a moment later, deducing at top-speed as he tried to decide if John’s excuse was worth believing. He must have because he swirled back around toward their flat and called after him:

“Could you grab some milk while you’re out?”

Was that all he was good for now?

He opened his mouth and fought the urge to announce that just as Mrs Hudson wasn’t their housekeeper, he wasn’t his personal assistant. But just as he was about to turn his friend away, he realised that maybe Sherlock was exactly what he needed. He needed support, moral support.

And perhaps physical, were he to completely break down.

“Can you come with me?” John pleaded, hating how child-like his voice sounded in the empty flat.

Sherlock paused for a moment, as though trying to confirm he wasn’t hearing things.

“To get milk?” He challenged.

Sighing, John admitted:

“No I just…I need a friend right now.”

_Pathetic._

_Pathetic, Watson!_

But to his surprise, Sherlock quietly descended the stairs, grabbed his own coat, and followed him out to hail a cab without protest.

 

As the cab pulled up to the cemetery, John felt like his body was going out of control. His heart raced, his knee bounced up and down, his shoulder ached. His head hurt, his whole body felt heavy, and his stomach was doing flips. There were already families there: mothers with their hands held to their mouth and tears on their face, older women standing alone and gazing at headstones. Even as they came to a stop both he and Sherlock remained silent. John pushed the door open and reached for his wallet, but Sherlock beat him to it. He offered Sherlock a confused, but grateful, smile before climbing out the cab.

Sherlock still didn’t demand any answers as John led him through the rows of graves. The air felt stiff and the clouds above seemed to stop as they made their way to the back of this section of the cemetery. Time always seemed to stop here, John thought.

And then there it was.

_Thomas Grayson Williams_

_1982-2010_

_Our son, our soldier_

_Our hero_

His breath caught in his throat, and he let out a cough as he tried to hide the fact that he felt like he was choking. Beside him, Sherlock stood with his hands stuffed in his coat and his eyes glued to the tombstone, finally figuring it all out. John supposed he owed him an explanation.

A sharp pain went through his shoulder, and he raised his hand to it to gently message it before he tried to begin. But the story he had rehearsed so many times, the story he’d seen replayed in his nightmares every night since that fateful day in the desert, was lost to him. He could only manage four simple words:

“I lived. He died.”

He let out a shaky breath and was ashamed how quickly the tears were trying to come.

But he wouldn’t let himself break down.

Not in front of another soldier’s grave, he decided. Not in front of all these grieving families.

Closing his eyes, he pinched the tip of his nose and fought back the tears. Suddenly, the cemetery didn’t seem so silent. It was loud- and angry. It was full of stories of fallen men and young boys who would never get the chance to get married or have kids. It was full of the cries of wives whose marriages were ripped apart, whose children would never know their dads or mums. A few rows back the elderly woman raised a hand to cover her face as she shook, as though she were still in shock after all these years. She still couldn’t quite comprehend that that life she once knew was over.

He held a hand to his forehead and took a few deep breaths before he looked back to the grave and began:

“On the outside, us soldiers, we’re stone. We’re the strongest kind of stone there is- nothing can get past us. We’ll fight like there’s no tomorrow, and we’ll drop everything the very second we get the call to service. But inside, behind the eyes of a soldier, there are stories you could never imagine. Stories of sacrifice you never knew possible and stories of horrors you would never think mankind capable of. We think we’re worlds stronger than we actually are and somehow, out there in battle, we actually become that strong. You run on a whole different kind of adrenaline in war. You don’t stop and it never leaves you, ever.

But when you come home, and you’re back in the world of reality television, queen size beds, fish and chips, football, shopping, cinemas…it’s hard to wrap your mind around it. The war still hasn’t left you, you see? And it never will. In the war we focus all that strength and energy and fear and pride in fighting. Back home…we remember. We remember missions that could have gone better. We remember the mistakes we made that cost lives. We remember our mates who are still out there, putting their lives on the line. We wear our memories no our faces as pride, but deep down, we’re in constant battle with ourselves. And those of us who fall to our own emotions…those of us who can’t just create mind palaces and file things away…it’s hard. It’s a struggle.”

He offered Sherlock an apologetic smile for the mind palace remark, but it was the best analogy he could come up with. Sherlock didn’t seem to take offence. Instead he gazed at John with those bright, blue-green eyes like he was seeing him, really seeing him, for the first time.

_Good,_ John thought. _This is me, the real me._

“At least, that’s what it’s like for me, anyway,” John admitted. “I suppose I sound like a nutcase, huh?”

“No,” Sherlock breathed. “That was beautiful, John.”

His own cheeks burned at the compliment, and his eyes met Sherlock’s. The two shared the smallest of smiles before quickly looking away, as though not daring to admit they had such an intimate moment.

“You’re the strongest person I know,” Sherlock confessed, his voice an echo against the still air. “You should never regret John, never. You live to serve, you live to help, and you have more guts than anyone I know. You should take great pride in what you’ve accomplished, and you shouldn’t feel embarrassed to admit that you have all these…emotions about it.”

His heart leapt; he’d never heard Sherlock speak so…humanly. He actually felt like his friend truly understood what was going on inside him- or perhaps, that understood that he could never understand.

“Being over there, fighting every day, saving lives and living on edge minute to minute was incredible and terrifying at the same time,” John said. “It was like, when I got caught up in the moment I felt like I was living in another world. In a world where I could solve anything, save anyone, accomplish anything. Then at night when I would close my eyes and think about what I actually went through, what I actually survived...it was pretty surreal. Now that’s all I think of. I think about everyone else over there, going through those same horrors every day. I wish I could still be over there, helping them, to be honest.”

Sherlock nodded, showing that he thought it was okay for him to feel that way.

“Thom here was shot in the leg,” John said, nodding toward the grave. “I was dispatched to help him, but as soon as I was ready to move him there was more gunfire. I actually only remember it in bits. At times I remember it as being a lot of shouting and gunshots, but at others I just remember it as being silence, like all sound was cut out from the world. I know I pulled myself away from Thom, long enough to draw my gun, but I wasn’t fast enough. Without me as his shield, Thom was shot in the chest and then I in the leg. I’m told there was an ambush afterwards, but they managed to pull us both out.”

He dared to raise his eyes to his friend to see his reaction, and when their eyes did meet again John’s heart stopped. He’d never seen such fear in Sherlock Holmes’ eyes as in that moment.

“You mean you could have died,” Sherlock said softly, his voice uncharacteristically hollow. “If you were still leaning over him, even for just one moment, you could have been shot in the back and killed.”

Yeah, there was that point of view of it too.

John nodded, feeling a bit sick inside.

Sherlock looked like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be ill or throw his arms around him. Thankfully, he did neither. John wasn’t sure if he could handle Sherlock going through an emotional breakdown along with him.

“But most importantly,” John said, drawing in a deep breath, “I could have been faster. I could have had better accuracy. I could have gotten to the scene quicker, I could have stabilised him quicker.”

“No,” Sherlock protested. “You’re not allowed to think like that.”

“Doesn’t work that way,” John stated with a shake of the head. “It doesn’t work like that because you do, you just do, and I suppose I always will. My therapist _was_ correct when she said I had PTSD. I was so in shock that I couldn’t remember how to live. You taught me that. You taught me how to live again. But Thom…Thom deserves to be here with me. He deserves to be spending the holidays with his family this year. He deserves to be able to go to the pub with his friends and to travel the world. But instead he died, he died in the service, fighting for our freedom. And I can’t…I can’t let him sit up there and watch me live my life like a bloody useless twat.”

His lips peeled upwards in a smirk, but Sherlock didn’t seem to find it funny. He still seemed too stunned to learn who the real John was, to discover the horrors he relived every day.

“They were my men to keep safe,” John said. “I’m proud that I was able to save almost all of them, and I’ll never forget a single one of their faces. But Thomas…I barely knew him, yet he’ll still be a part of me for the rest of my life.”

A hand fell on his good shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze. They stood in silence for a few moments. He was surprised how freeing it felt to get all that off his chest. He hoped Sherlock would understand now why he woke up screaming in the middle of the night. He hoped Sherlock would understand that he wanted to solve crimes with him not just because he was a _danger junkie_ , but because fighting was in his blood. Saving lives was in his blood.

At last he drew in a final breath, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the poppy he brought for Thom’s grave, just as he would do every year on this day for as long as he was able to get out to the cemetery.

As they turned away and walked back to the main roadway where they could catch a cab, John caught a glimpse of the elderly lady who was standing on her own. She offered him a firm smile of gratitude, like she somehow _knew_.

John simply nodded in appreciation and offered her the same smile as they passed.

“How about lunch?” Sherlock offered as he pulled his Belstaff closer around his body. The wind was picking up, and John was grateful when a cab pulled up and let out a young couple. They climbed in the cab after them. “I suddenly have a craving for fish and chips.”

Wearing a goofy grin, Sherlock let out an uneasy laugh, as though he hoped John wouldn’t be offended. Honestly, John was just glad to hear his flatmate wanted lunch for a change.

“Fish and chips it is,” John agreed.

When they arrived back at Baker Street that evening, Sherlock pulled his arm to stop him from going inside. Sherlock studied him for a long time, and John was secretly surprised that his story still seemed to be having a strong effect on him.

“Thank you, John,” Sherlock announced quietly. He looked around the street, full of residents rushing inside from the cold wind and cars honking at each other. A busker played down on the corner, and the smell of muffins and sweets from the nearby bakery was overwhelming. “Thank you for serving, so that I could run about London, do silly science experiments, eat fish and chips, and play violin at all hours of the bloody night. Thank you for keeping them safe and making sure every one of them got back home. And for those who didn’t…I know their families thank you, for never giving up. I’m sure Thom would thank you too.”

A single tear finally broke through and ran down John’s cheek. He never knew how much it would mean for someone to say that to him. He looked away, brushing his arm at his face and trying to pretend like he wasn’t on the verge of a massive breakdown.

But when he looked back to Sherlock again he couldn’t hide from him.

He extended his hand and grab Sherlock’s in a firm shake, and to his surprise his friend pulled him into a hug.

“I will never forget him,” John mumbled into Sherlock’s shoulder. “I’ll never forget any of them.”

“Neither will I,” Sherlock whispered. “Neither will I.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I appreciate any and all feedback.


End file.
